Can Asperger syndrome be distinguished from autism? An anatomic likelihood meta-analysis of MRI studies

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Can Asperger syndrome be distinguished from autism? An anatomic

likelihood meta-analysis of MRI studies.

<http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21406158>

Yu KK, Cheung C, Chua SE, McAlonan GM.

J Psychiatry Neurosci. 2011 Apr 1;36(2):100138.

Background: The question of whether Asperger syndrome can be

distinguished from autism has attracted much debate and may even incur

delay in diagnosis and intervention. Accordingly, there has been a

proposal for Asperger syndrome to be subsumed under autism in the

forthcoming Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, fifth

edition, in 2013. One approach to resolve this question has been to

adopt the criterion of absence of clinically significant language or

cognitive delay - essentially, the " absence of language delay. " To our

knowledge, this is the first meta-analysis of magnetic resonance imaging

(MRI) studies of people with autism to compare absence with presence of

language delay....

Conclusion: Whereas grey matter differences in people with Asperger

syndrome compared with controls are sparser than those reported in

studies of people with autism, the distribution and direction of

differences in each category are distinctive.

alternatively:

Meta-analysis of Gray Matter Abnormalities in Autism Spectrum Disorder:

Should Asperger Disorder Be Subsumed Under a Broader Umbrella of

Autistic Spectrum Disorder? <http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21464365>

Via E, Radua J, Cardoner N, Happé F, Mataix-Cols D.

Arch Gen Psychiatry. 2011 Apr;68(4):409-18.

CONTEXT:

Studies investigating abnormalities of regional gray matter volume in

autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have yielded contradictory results. It is

unclear whether the current subtyping of ASD into autistic disorder and

Asperger disorder is neurobiologically valid.

OBJECTIVES:

To conduct a quantitative meta-analysis of voxel-based morphometry

studies exploring gray matter volume abnormalities in ASD, to examine

potential neurobiological differences among ASD subtypes, and to create

an online database to facilitate replication and further analyses by

other researchers....

CONCLUSIONS:

These results confirm the crucial involvement of structures linked to

social cognition in ASD. The absence of significant differences between

ASD subtypes may have important nosologic implications for the DSM-5.

The publically available database will be a useful resource for future

research.